Out and about on the beat with town’s community police

I joined community beat manager PC Dave Green and PCSO Nigel Wass for their evening patrols on Tuesday to see how the team operates, and clamps down on antisocial behaviour.

Our first stop was a visit to a Platform House Group-owned property in Brook Road in the town, where a man had been arrested there last weekend and there had been some unsavory characters hanging around the boarded-up flat.

Earlier in thwe week the boarding had been taken down and used for illegal activities – it had since been replaced by Platform so the officers wanted to ensure it was still secure.

It was thanks to Horncastle police diligence in stamping out anti-social behaviour that there is now much less trouble in Horncastle. and a lot of the complaints of anti-social behaviour they receive are either neighbour disputes relating to noise or domestic disturbances.

PCSO Wass said: “We’ve done a great job here in Horncastle; we don’t have many problems now because we put in robust practices to stamp out this type of behaviour.”

PC Green explained: “The key is for people to report anti-social behaviour –people will complain on social media the police are doing nothing to stamp out this behaviour but we can’t do anything if nothing is reported.”

We then headed over to Coningsby where they had been reports of youths hanging around the play area creating a disturbance.

There was no one there at the time, so went over to Spilsby, where the police had to put in a lot of hard work to stamp out rural crimes – deer poaching at night and hare coursing in the daytime.

PCSO Wass said: “We are very proactive and getting the message out there that this behaviour will not be tolerated and we will crack down on it.”

We then headed over to Spilsby where there had also been reports of youths hanging around and causing a nuisance in some woods behind the housing estate. Again there was no one there.

PC Green added: “We’ve been patrolling these areas since the complaints came in and the message seems to be getting through; there’s no-one here.”

Then we pulled over a driver who had illegal lighting on the underside of his car so PC Green issued him with a warning to have the lighting removed.

“it’s important to communicate to the public that we’re not here to catch them out,” said PCSO Wass, “We’re here to make sure everyone is safe.”